242 to 188 Pounds: The Honest Truth About How I Actually Did It

The Comment That Made Me Record This Video

Someone left a comment on one of my Speediance videos: they were going to buy the original machine, and once they had a physique like mine, they'd upgrade to the Gym Monster 2S. It was a compliment, and I appreciated it. But it stopped me cold.

Because if I let that comment sit without a response, I'm doing the same thing every other fitness influencer does: posting results without context and letting people assume it was hard work and consistency alone. I've watched enough of those creators get exposed to know exactly what that looks like from the outside. I'm not doing it.

So here's everything. The full protocol. Every pharmaceutical, every data point, every calorie. This is how I went from 242 lbs to 188 lbs between June and December of 2023.

First: I've Never Done This Naturally

This is the realization that prompted me to record the video in the first place. When I was talking to my wife about this transformation, I realized something: I have never transformed my physique naturally. Not once.

In high school, I went from being a fat kid to a relatively fit senior year. I thought that was willpower and effort. It wasn't. I was using phentermine — which was over-the-counter at the time and available online. I just didn't think of it as a drug because I was a teenager and it was easy to get.

The transformation before 2023? Same thing — phentermine, plus running. I credited the running. I had a partner at the time who was posting about her transformation publicly without mentioning that the entire thing was done on a prescription appetite suppressant. That bothered me then and it bothers me now. You can't tell people you achieved something naturally when you didn't. They'll try to replicate it and fail, and they'll think the failure is their fault.

So: my 2023 transformation, like every transformation I've ever done, used pharmaceutical support. Now let me tell you exactly what that looked like.

The Stack (All Prescribed, All Through Doctors)

**TRT — restructured protocol.** I've been on testosterone replacement therapy for years. My levels were low — a symptom I traced back to a broken testicle from a farm accident that I couldn't get looked at immediately because I didn't have health insurance at the time. I found out about the damage during a vasectomy procedure years later.

The issue wasn't my TRT dose — it was the administration schedule. My previous protocol had me doing intramuscular injections infrequently, which created blood serum spikes and valleys. The new doctor — Matrix, now Matrix Reformed — switched me to subcutaneous injections three times per week at the same total dose. The more stable serum levels changed how I felt dramatically. That alone wouldn't have driven the weight loss, but it laid the foundation.

**Tirzepatide (GLP-1/GIP agonist).** I specifically requested tirzepatide over semaglutide because the gastric side effect profile was better in the literature. I never had a single GI issue throughout the entire protocol — not at the lowest dose, not at the highest. The hunger suppression was real. I have an insatiable appetite normally — the kind of hunger signaling that makes counting calories feel like running against a tide. Tirzepatide turned that signal down to something I could work with.

The timing of hunger spikes on a weekly injection schedule is interesting. The half-life is approximately 5 days, so you'd expect peak hunger on day 5. For me, it was days 3 through 5 — variable. Never the day of injection, never the day after, never the day before the next injection.

**Anavar (oral anabolic).** This is where it gets more unconventional and where I want to be precise about why it was included. My stated goal to the doctor was: lose 50+ lbs in six months without losing a single ounce of muscle. That's an aggressive body recomposition goal. With a significant caloric deficit of this magnitude over this duration, even with TRT, muscle loss is a real risk. Anavar was included specifically as a muscle-preservation protocol. Looking back at the progress photos, it worked — the muscle retention was better than any previous cut I've done.

**Tadalafil.** Yes, the erectile dysfunction medication. The mechanism that matters here isn't the primary use case — it's that tadalafil is a vasodilator. In the context of training, it increases blood flow and pump during workouts. I know how that sounds. I can tell you it was a genuine motivator during a period when I was training at a massive caloric deficit. Seeing immediate evidence that your muscles are responding to the work — even when you're running on 1,000 calories — keeps you going. Of any item on this stack, it has the highest safety profile and the most widely-studied data.

The Data: Calories, Steps, Volume

Here's where this transformation becomes incomprehensible to most people who haven't done something similar.

**Calories, 6 days a week: 800–1,200.** That's it. That's the number. Six days a week, I was eating between 800 and 1,200 calories. One day per week was unrestricted — but it couldn't be more often than every 7 days, and I tried to stretch it to every 10 or so. I could not have sustained this caloric intake without the tirzepatide. I don't get full, and I'm chronically hungry. On 800 calories without pharmaceutical hunger suppression, I would have failed by day three.

**Steps: minimum 10,000, reality closer to 20,000.** I have insomnia, and it gets worse at low calories. Every night I couldn't sleep, I went downstairs, got on the treadmill, and played video games until I was tired enough to go back to bed. This wasn't scheduled cardio. This was insomnia management that happened to stack additional daily steps. Most nights it pushed me well above the 10K minimum.

**Lifting volume: 30,000 to 50,000 lbs daily.** This is the number that sounds impossible until you understand what it means in practice. At a Speediance or functional trainer, doing multiple exercises, multiple sets at relatively moderate weight with controlled reps — 30,000 lbs is achievable. It required a significant time commitment during a winter where my kids were too young for activities and it was too cold to be outside. I calculated that window and I used it.

The Timeline

- **June 2023:** 242 lbs. Starting point.

- **August 4:** 230 lbs. Protocol started in mid-July.

- **September 7:** 220 lbs.

- **October:** 213 lbs.

- **November:** 202 lbs.

- **December:** 200 lbs. (Slower month — Thanksgiving. Also the month I briefly went off TRT while transitioning from the clinic to an endocrinologist.)

- **Target achieved by March 2024:** Under 190, with six-pack abs at six feet tall.

The brief TRT-off period in December was actually revealing. My endocrinologist wanted to run baseline labs. What I noticed: meticulously tracking calories without the one cheat day, my weight dropped faster off TRT. But my levels went near zero. The tests confirmed the original diagnosis — primary hypogonadism from the physical damage — and I went back on. I'm on TRT for the rest of my life. My levels go to zero without it.

What I Actually Think About All This

I'm not advising this protocol. I'm not linking to doctors with affiliate codes. I'm not saying this is safe for you, or that your situation is anything like mine.

What I am saying is that I watched the Liver King situation, and the thing that bothered me about it wasn't the drugs — it was the lecture. The "you're subprime" framing while quietly running a protocol that would make my stack look like a multivitamin. If you're going to post your physique online, you owe people the context.

The commenter who said they wanted to buy a Speediance to get a physique like mine — I want them to know what they're actually looking at. Years of training history. Multiple rounds of significant weight loss. A hormonal condition that's been actively managed for years. A six-month period of extreme discipline that I specifically structured around a winter when I knew my family life would allow it. And pharmaceutical support that I couldn't have done this without.

The Speediance is real. The progressive overload tracking, the ease of daily lifting, the volume I can accumulate without setup overhead — all real. The physique required a lot more than a cable machine. Now you know what.